


if you remain in me (and my words remain in you)

by fortheweightofus



Series: Interim [2]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon Disabled Character, Fix-It, M/M, Post-DOFP, Pre-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 10:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2769839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheweightofus/pseuds/fortheweightofus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love you,” Charles says anyway, to the blackness of night and all their demons. “Will you stay?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you remain in me (and my words remain in you)

**Author's Note:**

> The companion piece that no one wanted- I have far too many thoughts about the in-between of these stories. My timeline is all out of whack and the characters are probably OOC; I'm not feeling quite as good about this one as I did the first, but please forgive me, I can't be held entirely responsible for things I write at 2 a.m. Enjoy!

 

Charles never knows if Erik is returning, but he leaves his room exactly the way he left it, just in case.

 

'Just in case' is a small reason and not a very convincing one, when the school reaches maximum capacity and they are twelve beds short and _'we need another bedroom, Professor'_ Hank says with barely concealed exasperation. Charles stares back at him with bewildered eyes and cannot inspire his hands into motion, cannot bring himself to wheel his chair from where it sits in the doorway. Ororo is twelve years old, and the tightness of her mouth and the moisture in her eyes say she understands. For the time being, she does not mind sleeping on the floor.

 

'Just in case' is what finally draws Charles off the serum for good, is what leaves him with trembling hands and watery eyes for weeks, and Hank doesn't mind it quite so much then.

 

Years pass and Charles loses his desperate streak; a victory, he thinks, that deserves celebrating. He and Hank split the oldest bottle of wine in the cellar on the day he reaches out and touches every mind on earth at once. The two of them drink the night away splayed out across the damp stone floor, and Charles realizes there are tears leaking from his eyes at around midnight. They stay awake for hours longer, and Hank is either too considerate or too drunk to point this out.

 

He meets Raven again for the first time in the fall of 1976, and oh, how she's changed. She stands in his doorway pale and golden haired, shifting uncomfortably, wearing her skin like a peace offering.

 

Charles stares at her for a moment, before commenting “it's a lovely disguise, but I was rather hoping to see my sister,” and Mystique doesn't cry, but Raven does. Her eyes flash yellow and well with tears, and she kneels beside him and buries her face in his neck, her back bowed with the weight of promises and time and so, so many regrets.

 

She hasn't come to stay, but she will be back, and Charles smiles beatifically and pretends that is enough.

 

Against all expectation, Raven does return, two months on, holding the hands of two mutant children she found wandering the streets of Manhattan. The gentleness with which she addresses them and the softness of her amber gaze tell Charles that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he does not ruin everything he touches.

 

That night, after the new students are sleeping, Raven sits with Charles in her old bedroom. They wrap themselves in cotton sheets and share drinks, tears, and quiet laughter that bubbles out of the open window and into the darkness of night. Raven falls asleep first and Charles cannot resist tucking her blanket under her chin and brushing his lips lightly against her forehead. Watching the moonlight play across her sleeping face, Charles feels so very old.

 

He wheels himself into Erik's old room, afterward, and sits silently amongst the piles of textbooks accumulated therein, and knows there are dreams that cannot be.

 

Raven stays until dinner the next day, then steals away like a thief in the night. She does not leave without a tiptoed journey into Charles' room after she thinks he is asleep. She presses a kiss upon his cheek, then flees.

 

Charles sobs the moment her mind is out of range.

 

He is always sad, but things are better. They really, really are.

 

He and Hank have a staff, a school full of pupils. Charles is so kind to them all, benevolent and trustworthy but never affectionate. He smiles benignly at every quivering lip and twitching brow and does not shake hands, does not give hugs. His children are so perfect, and this time he vows he will not destroy a single one.

 

He meets Scott Summers when the boy is five years old. He looks nothing like his brother, and the immense relief this brings to Charles leaves him with the bitter aftertaste of shame. Alex Summers has not been by the school in months. He returned from Vietnam with steel in his gaze and a furrow in his brow, looking as though he had never left solitary confinement. Despite the way Alex's eyes had softened when he'd gazed upon his professor, Charles will never forgive himself for staying behind while his children went to war.

 

The longest Charles goes without seeing Raven is one year. When she returns to him, bleeding slightly from a cut above her left eye, he throws his arms around her neck and sobs as she bemusedly pats his back and strokes his hair and assures him, repeatedly, that she is fine, that she always meant to come back, that he will not get rid of her so easily...

 

Afterward, she wipes his eyes with her sleeve and helps him to bed. Charles' eyes are swollen with shame, and Raven stares and stares as though something has clicked, as though finally understanding that which has mystified her for years. She stays at the mansion an entire month.

 

She leaves, and returns three weeks later with Erik in tow.

 

Charles finds them on his doorstep in the spring of 1979. Raven has one foot across the threshold before the door is fully opened, and one hand fiercely gripping the sleeve of Erik's coat. The frown lines weighing down Erik's mouth are the only sign he's aged at all since Charles has seen him last. He stands behind Raven, all shifting eyes and clenched fists, and won't look Charles in the face.

 

Charles allows himself a moment to drink in the sight of them in, then promptly slams the door in their faces.

 

He hears Raven swear violently and pound her fists against the door so hard the entire wall shakes. He doesn't even make it to his bedroom before the tears blurring his vision make it impossible to see. He slides out of his chair and curls up in a corner, arms wrapped around himself so tightly he bruises, wracked by sobs so violent his entire body heaves.

 

It's in this way that Hank finds him ten minutes later. Charles is swiftly restored to his own room and placed on his bed none too gently while Hank curses up a storm in the background. He sounds like Raven, and Charles isn't sure whether the thought makes him want to laugh or cry, so he does both while Hank grows increasingly hysterical. The image of Erik burns behind his eyelids.

 

The way he'd cowered behind Raven. His downcast eyes and angry fists.

 

 _He didn't want to come back_ , a voice in Charles' head whispers, and he aches and aches because he knows it is true.

 

Charles doesn't leave his bed for two days, and on the evening of the second, Erik returns.

 

The room is bathed in the soft azure of twilight; Erik gingerly steps inside, closing the door softly behind him. Charles peers at his visitor through half-lidded eyes. His lavish pillows and blankets lie scattered around on the floor, cast aside in favor of one black turtle neck shirt that Charles wraps around himself like a sheet.

 

Erik says “I see you kept that,” and begins to cry.

 

Charles has seen Erik cry a grand total of once, which is likely more than can be said for any other of the man's acquaintances. To say he is taken aback by the vulnerability is an understatement.

 

Erik is projecting waves of frustration even as tears trickle down his cheeks. Charles catches some of the thoughts, the self-hatred, the disgust at himself for showing weakness, and the _love_ woven around the mental image of Charles at this very moment, sleepy-eyed and rumpled and clinging to a cheap shirt that is decades old.

 

He is not in Erik's thoughts, is not experiencing these feelings with him as he once did so very long ago, but even the bare brush with these slivers of Erik's beautiful, beautiful mind is overwhelming. Charles is ashamed but unsurprised to feel wetness on his own cheeks. “Of course I kept it,” he says softly. Erik stares at him.

 

“-you idiot.” he adds for good measure, and Erik crosses the room in two steps and crushes Charles to his chest.

 

Charles finds himself with a face full of coarse fabric that smells so strongly of Erik it makes him dizzy. He burrows into the other man's chest, fingers grasping at his shirt and digging in like anchors to the ocean floor. Charles is shaking; his current position renders him unable to breathe or see and judging from the irregular thudding in his chest he is seconds away from a panic attack, but Erik is here, Erik is _here_ and is whispering to him in languages he always meant to learn but never did and he _understands_ , he does, and he wouldn't move if the world crumbled to an end in this very room.

 

Raven finds them the next morning in much the same position. Charles has drifted off to sleep, and the bleariness of Erik's gaze says he is moments away from joining him. She presses them into the soft mattress still entangled in each other, and unceremoniously tosses a blanket over their bodies. “Sleep,” she orders, and as soon as she closes the door, Erik complies.

 

When they awake, they argue. Their screams reverberate through the very bones of the mansion. Erik storms out after two hours, throat burning and limbs shaking like branches in a hurricane. Charles watches him go as his chest heaves and black spots dance across his vision.

 

Erik returns in half an hour.

 

The next week passes in much the same manner, a seemingly endless cycle of battle and reconciliation, a war aware that peace is never an option. Each clash proves so overwhelming that by the time it is over Charles cannot speak and Erik has crumpled every metal appliance in the mansion twice.

 

On the eighth day of Erik's stay, he rages at Charles for twenty minutes before realizing the other man has not said a single word in reply.

 

He continues his tirade for five minutes more before realizing Charles hasn't spoken because he _can't_.

 

Erik blinks, and finds himself towering threateningly over a thin, pale man in a wheelchair. Charles does not meet his eyes, and for one heart-wrenching instant Erik takes in the slump of his shoulders and the dullness of his eyes and thinks he has killed him. He kneels in front of Charles' chair and cups the other man's cheeks with his hands. Charles blinks, sluggishly. He looks as though every hope he ever had has drained from his body.

 

Erik kisses him.

 

It takes another week for Charles to return to himself, and Erik does not leave his side the entire time. He entwines his fingers with Charles' during the day and cradles him to his chest at night. They pass seven days without saying a word.

 

Charles is the first to break the silence. It's an ungodly hour of night and by rights they should both be asleep, but the buzz of Erik's thoughts and the shallowness of his breathing are enough to let Charles know that he is not the only one with a weight on his heart.

 

Charles inhales softly, head resting against Erik's chest. He feels the muscles beneath him tense, the steady heartbeat quicken.

 

“I love you,” Charles says anyway, to the blackness of night and all their demons. “Will you stay?”

 

The words hang from a noose, suspended in the deafening silence.

 

“Yes.”

 

Erik does.

 


End file.
